Testing the universality of fragmentation functions

Using fragmentation functions for charged pions, charged kaons, and (anti)p rotons recently extracted from experimental data of e(+)e(-) annihilation a t the Z-boson resonance and at centre-of-mass energy roots = 29 GeV, we per form a global study of inclusive charged-hadron production in p (p) over ba r, gammap, and gamma gamma collisions at next-to-leading order in the parto n model of quantum chromodynamics. Comparisons of our results with pp data from CERN Sp (p) over barS and the Fermilab Tevatron, yp data from DESY HER A, and gamma gamma data from CERN LEP2 allow us to test the universality of the fragmentation functions predicted by the factorization theorem. Furthe rmore, we perform comparisons with e(+)e(-) annihilation data from LEP2 so as to test the scaling violations predicted by the Altarelli-Parisi evoluti on equations. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.